Dear, all,

I am very new to the Linux world. Maybe this question has already been asked by almost all people. What is the best Linux distro for day-to-day use?. I am trying to transition from Windows to Linux, and. Following are my main priority. I am not much technical person.

(1) Community based
(2) Fast and stable.
(3) easy to install
(4) Privacy (that is the main reason I am switching to Linux)
(5) multi-monitor capabilities.
(6) best driver support out of the box
(7) Matlab support out of the box (scientific research purposes)

I am using a ThinkPad P52 20M9 laptop and currently using Windows 10 os. I am looking for something unique, not necessarily looking for the os with a window or mac os like appearance.

I highly appreciate it if you could suggest to me a few Linux distributions so I can try. Thanks for your time and concern.

sbandara,

Welcome to LQ forums.

MATLAB support:
https://uk.mathworks.com/support/req...html?sec=linux

Take your pick from the above. I would go for Ubuntu 20.04 personally.

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the prompt response

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.
I've only played with Matlab using Windows many years ago...

7. It depends on the release you purchased/own. Those are the distributions I assume are "certified" by Math Works for the latest release but others might work.

Red Hat and SuSE enterprise require a purchased license. You can try a live version of debian and Ubuntu and pick which one you like better, I prefer debian but Ubuntu selling point is for beginners. CentOS is basically a free version of Red Hat but I do not know if it works out of the box.

1 members found this post helpful.

I appreciate for the reply, I like the idea been using Debian.

Debian is mainstream. It's not specifically pitched at newbies or at experts; it's just Linux. But it is also the parent of numerous other distros, including Ubuntu, and they all use the same package management system, so once you have used Debian, you have a lot of places you can go without having to learn too much that is new.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you very much hazel!

https://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

I would say you can try debian, ubuntu, mint, whatever you like and also you can later move to another one. You can always try to boot a distro before installing them (from a pendrive or by using a VM).
Regarding your points, they cannot be used to select any distro, because they are all valid for most of them.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi sbandara

Hope you have a good time on this forum, but be careful, unless you can show you've really tried to answer your own question, and show you've done so you'll find some longterm members will not be very helpful.

I on the otherhand don't really stress over that sort of thing, if I can help I will - I've had loads of useful tips on the forum so good luck, just move over to Linux - you won't regret it and it can do anything Windows can and more.

Cheers

With most variations of Linux (distro's) -there are about 700 active distro's available- should be able to find the drivers you want and install them easily...... Unless, of course, the app is to drive something recently released.

If that is the designed for Windoze then you may well be able to use something like wine to use it.

There is also very probably a linux equal, so pop across to the software section of this site and ask there if there is.

It is nice to see a newbie stating the details of their electronic marvel with the first post. Hope it becomes a habit when (not if) you want further help.

Sorry. As suggested in the sticky, in this forum, I ain't suggesting a distro for you to try. And as, also, suggested grab a couple of distros to try live before you install one.

1 members found this post helpful.

I appreciate your kind reply. I am reading about "Move from Windows to Linux" since last month and still do.

An easy way to try distros is to get a USB drive of 32GB or larger and install ventoy on it. Once you have ventoy, you can download .iso live versions, or whatever the distro offers, and just do a normal copy to the USB drive, then boot whichever you want from the boot menu. Several distros, including Debian, offer live versions, which let you try the distro and see if you like it, and if it will run and install easily on your computer, before you do an actual installation. I distro-hopped a lot back when I first moved to Linux, 15 years or so ago, and I eventually settled on Debian, one of the mother distros. Dozens of distros are based on it, and I've tried many of them, but I keep going back to the origins. It's not for everyone, but it is for me. There are hundreds of flavors of ice cream, and some people tend to stay with one, while others buy a different flavor every time they go to the store. You an do the same with Linux. The added complication is that there are many desktop environments available, and most distros will happily run any of them. The combinations are almost endless. The blessing and the curse of Linux is that there are so many choices one has to make.

1 members found this post helpful.

Another distribution that might be of interest is Scientific Linux. They are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9 (current version), so it should work just fine with MatLab (which recommends at least RHEL 7.5).

Cheers,
Jim

Thank you so much for your reply. I think now I have some idea about the type of Linux distribution I should install on my computer.

Thanks to all of the previous people who gave me direction on where to start, and thanks for their time, concern, and support.

thanks for the information